Begining of the End
by LS of ACO
Summary: Anatolia cannot maintain its hold on the world with a single Lynx forever...but no more can be found. An isolated group of ex-corporate MT pilots fighting the Anatolian government uncover its plan to crush the rebellion once and for all. My sequel to AC4.


**Author's note: This is only my second uploaded fanfiction, but it's probably the fifth or sixth one I've started. Anyway, this is the sequel that I've long-since envisioned for AC4, so I thought I should go ahead and post what I have before FA hits the states so that this story doesn't become _quite_ as out-dated as my other Armored Core story has. This may be all you ever get of it, or I might actually finish this one. We'll see how things go. I hope you enjoy whatever I can manage to dish out. Please, read and review!**

_To most of the surviving humans, those pathetic masses huddled underground in my care, hiding in their pockets of self-destruction, wasting away of their own weakness and fear while I watch, while I monitor, while I care and harvest and build and plan, while I provide all that makes their pointless lives possible and, to them at least, 'meaningful'…to them the Great Destruction makes up one full half of that elusive and legendary thing, 'The Past. The other half is filled in their minds by the Old Days, which, were they asked, they would define as the time that came before the Great Destruction, which they would dimly acknowledge as somehow responsible for the way in which they live. It is quite simple to them. First came the Old Days, then the Great Destruction, then now. That is the full extent of their knowledge of the past. And so much the better._

_ But a few of them, those in positions of 'power' and those who pride themselves on their 'knowledge'; they would add a bit more. _

_In the Old Days, they would explain, people were organized into things called 'nations', of which there were a great many. They were all made up of different numbers and kinds of people, and each had its own rules known as 'laws.' Each of these 'nations' of people 'owned' an irregularly shaped patch of the surface of the Earth, and each 'controlled' this area and the people who lived within it. Thus, these 'intellectuals' might muse, the people had, in a way, been controlling themselves. And they would surely chuckle at the existence of such a foolish and unnecessary institution as a nation._

_And the Great Destruction, they would explain, was a series of 'wars', or large-scale conflicts between nations and other people-organizations, which lead to the collapse of the entire socioeconomic system, a phrase which they would not understand in the slightest._

_The so-called Old Days were of course much more complicated than these humans would explain, but their basic idea of them is fairly correct. But their understanding of the Great Destruction is entirely, entirely wrong. The wars themselves were nothing new. They are a part of the 'Old Days' as surely as are nations. _

_The National Dismantlement War of 2148 was no more a Great Destruction than was the Russian Revolution. At the absolute most it was a change of global economic norms, and at the more realistic least it was simply a power shift like any other of the old order. The new corporate masters of the world, after all, behaved in much the same way that governments had always behaved. And the Lynx War of 2155, while it set the wheels in motion, was no great change in and of itself._

_In fact, if anything the Lynx War itself was a step backwards. When Anatolia destroyed the companies' power structure and assassinated every known Lynx apart from their own mercenary, it was almost as if the world had gone back to being ruled by the UN council. Anatolia seized control of the corporate infrastructure with the same administrative and political savvy that had allowed them to remain independent of the six companies in the first place, using the threat of their legendary Next pilot to subdue almost all remaining corporate military forces. And those few soldiers who went rogue during the fall and stuck to their guerrilla tactics even after the formal surrender of the ragged remains of the companies to Anatolia were all but ignored by the new government. After all, they were not Lynx. What possible threat could they present?_

_But the Anatolians knew, of course, that they could not maintain a stranglehold on the world with a single Next and its pilot forever. And so the research and developments departments of the six major companies were restarted under strict supervision, the scientists allowed to continue their work, now for Anatolia's benefit. The unspoken focus was, of course, the development of a new means of controlling Next which did not require such high levels of AMS ability. _

_For Anatolia could not find enough Lynx. There were dozens of fully operational Next still in existence, but precious few could be found to pilot them. The corporate Lynx were dead, and the companies had long since filtered out and pressed into service everyone in their spheres of influence of even the most remote AMS ability, which seemed to be genetic yet resisted all attempts to tie it to a specific gene. Anatolia, of course, had the combined resources of all the companies put together, and was also unbound by the corporate treaties which had made some areas off limits to Lynx harvesting, and was therefore able to find several AMS-capable individuals in isolated artic and tropical regions. But these were the weakest kind of Lynx. They were all slow, most remained wholly unskilled in operating any kind of Next, many were psychologically unsuited to combat, and the vast majority turned out to have low Kojima tolerance and died within a few years._

_And the projects and research into alternative ways of operating Next were, universally, failures. Nothing but direct AMS control was fast enough; as the companies themselves had discovered during their arms race a decade before, every known conventional control system was simply too slow. _

_The AMS system was refined, of course, but there was only so much that the scientists could do to increase the ability of the Next to pick up psychic signals. Amplifiers and implants in Lynx's bodies could increase AMS capacity slightly, and research into drugs to enhance psychic resonance met some success. But as the years ticked away and the last Raven, as the Lynx once known as Anatolia's mercenary had come to be called, began to reach the limits of his Kojima tolerance, there was still no breakthrough in sight, and the new Lynx were dieing like flies, both from Kojima poisoning and combat._

_The rebels gained strength as people blamed the Anatolian government for the war-ravaged world in which they lived. There was a revolt in former Peru in 2160 as citizens sided with the renegade corporate soldiers against Anatolia despite the threat of the last Raven and the new Lynx. Seven of the new Lynx were killed in the suppression, though the revolt was ultimately successfully suppressed. Another revolt in the former Ukraine a year later killed five more new Lynx, and rebel attacks soon became more coordinated. Renewed efforts to genetically engineer or otherwise stimulate AMS capacity in individuals were failures. The drugs and the implants were not enough, but they seemed to be the limit._

_Alternate varieties of Craft were considered and rejected. Fermi and other Kojima-powered MTs were too easy to sabotage, too slow on the battlefield, too easily surrounded by the rebel MTs and Normals. None the less, production was drastically stepped up._

_Fewer Lynx were found every year, until finally, in 2162, no new Lynx could be located. The last Raven died of advanced Kojima poisoning on December 29__th__ of that year. It was the beginning of the end. A portion of former Brazil broke free of Anatolian control and set up its own government. The Anatolian forces were beaten back at the boarder by former corporate soldiers, now reorganized into a loose command structure. Rebels seized control of the former Ukraine, long a corporate stronghold, and re-instituted the _Pax Economica _within its boarders_._ The world under Anatolia had been slow in recovering militarily from the Lynx War, and Anatolia simply did not have enough loyal soldiers to fight the separatists without the distinct technological advantage of Next._

_But there were no Lynx found in 2163, or in 2164. It seemed that psychic resonance had been all but bred out of the human race. The Lynx were all cloned, sperm and egg samples taken, but there were doubts about the government's ability to hold out long enough for the clones and children to grow up; psychic resonance did not appear until at least age fifteen. _

_By 2165, Anatolia was down to 16 Lynx; fewer than half the number that the companies had possessed before the Lynx War. And none of the Anatolian Lynx were as skilled as the corporate Lynx had been._

_That was why Project Goliath was approved. Proposed by a former __Rosenthal__ scientist still loyal to Anatolia, the project called for the construction of Kojima-powered weapons on an unprecedented scale, measured in kilometers. These massive 'Armored Fortresses' would make up for the lack of elegant control and precision striking with their shear size and power, not merely defeating the rebels, but crushing them. At least, that was the plan. In reality the fortresses took too long to build, too long to transport, and used far too much Kojima power to be even remotely safe for operators or civilians. The forts were of little use in suppressing the rebellions, as the guerillas had often faded away again before the forts could get within any kind of useful range. And while several were able to re-take the former Ukraine, they so devastated the population and landscape in doing so that the region was all but useless to Anatolia._

_The tide of public opinion had now turned irreversibly against the government in Anatolia. The Armored Fortresses were seen as a massive waste of valuable resources, and the ravaging of Ukraine an expression of complete and utter disregard for human life or happiness. The rebels had an endless supply of angry volunteers with nothing to lose, and soon Anatolia could not find enough grunts to operate an Armored Fortress without one of them sabotaging it in some way._

_Project Goliath came to a screeching halt, and the focus moved back to effective Next control. The program ran into the same stumbling blocks as ever, and no further progress was made until 2168, when a solution was proposed by, of all people, a former __Leonemeccanica computer programmer._

_Everything seems obvious in retrospect. The __National Dismantlement War appears inevitable. Or it would, were there any humans left who knew enough to make such a judgment. The rogue states squeezed too hard; the UN took power. The UN did not squeeze hard enough; the corporations suddenly outgunned it, and took power. The corporations turned on each other, in true free-market fashion, and Anatolia took power. All the way back to the ancient Sumerians and Chinese; it seems inevitable, obvious, that they would stop hunting and gathering and being farming, forming cities, forming governments. It seems inevitable that they would invent the concept of gods, invisible beings superior to themselves who cared for them, but whose wrath was terrible. All of this seems so obvious, so unavoidable. But in fact, none of it was._

_And how different might the world be, with a point-of-divergence as far back in history as the ancient Sumerians? Imagine a world with no unified Spain, no Russian Revolution, or in which there was no American blockade in 2086. These worlds are only a breath away; nothing is inevitable._

_The__Leonemeccanica programmer pointed out two very simple facts. The first was that the complete combat records of many Lynx, including the last Raven, were still fully intact, and ready to be put to use._

_The second was that Leonemeccanica had made great advances in artificial intelligence during the _Pax Economica. 

_It seems so inevitable, in retrospect, how the pieces fell into place after that._


End file.
